And who ran on the Southern Strategy in 1964, promising Southern whites that a Republican federal government would do less to interfere with southern discrimination against and disenfranchisement of blacks?
Indeed. That was when Exalted Cyclops Bobby Byrd, Al Gore Sr., Jim Eastland and all those other nasty racist Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights Act ran off and joined the Republican Party.
I remember it as if it were yesterday.
Although most of the segregationist either joined the Republican party or supported their candidates, some remained Democrats to continue the fight for segregation. Others such as Bryd explicitly renounced his earlier views favoring segregation.
However, for most segregationist, supporting a party that was becoming increasingly black and supporting policies that favored blacks was just impossible. They simply had no other place to go except the Republican Party.
So, you are trying to convince us that segregationists left the party of segregation, aka George Wallace and fled to the party that stopped George Wallace. Really that is what you want people to believe?
Of course. George Wallace deserted the Democratic Party both in 1968 and 1972 to run for president as a candidate of the American Independent Party. Well know Democrats such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms became Republicans. However, most Democrats remained in the party in both 60's and 70's but offered little support for Democrats in national elections. Some out right endorse Republican presidential candidates or refuse to endorse the Democrat nominee.
In the 1980's, Reagan views on state rights, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, cutting welfare (which in the South, went mostly to blacks), school busing, and affirmative action was all in complete alignment with the views of southern segregationists. The results of the 1980 and 1984 election left no doubt that Republicans would own the South and within 20 years the once solid Democratic South would become the Solid Republican South.